Revelation: An Evolution of Introspection
Curated by Lonnie Graham
Featuring work by Donald Camp and Clarence Williams
Twenty years ago, New Orleans underestimated the impact of Hurricane Katrina. After Katrina hit land, aging infrastructure failed, an entire city was thrown into an unimaginable hellscape of flooding waters and crumbling humanity, and the United States Government proved institutional neglect and systemic inequalities were (and are) still very much a part of the American way of life – especially for people of color. Two photographers, Donald Camp and Clarence Williams, reflect on that history today in their two-person exhibition Revelation: an Evolution of Introspection at the InLiquid Gallery in the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia, PA. With this exhibition, InLiquid aims to educate our community and share resources to prevent such tragedies from happening here in the Kensington area of Philadelphia. Ideally, this artwork and the education our programming will provide can also be shared as a resource in cities throughout the country as global climate change continues to evolve and creates the need for greater emergency preparedness in all areas.
Both Camp and Williams share a similar career path, coming of age as Black men in Pennsylvania and entering the workforce as staff photographers for local news outlets in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, and The Philadelphia Tribune, retrospectively. Through their photojournalist careers, both sought to ensure agency to the Black subjects they captured so that readers would see Black men presented in more nuanced and dignified ways than just through mugshots, as was and is still all too common in the representation of these subjects. Though they share a similar origin story, they both arrived at two very different places in terms of their visual interpretation of the world and the representation of their life experiences.
Revelation: an Evolution of Introspection includes a haunting series of images captured by Williams in the days and the weeks immediately following Hurricane Katrina's landfall and the subsequent failure of levees. His photos highlight the sheer chaos of the time for those seeking shelter among the bodies of the deceased who were abandoned. In a more subtle approach, Camp uses mud that had been washed inland for his non-traditional photographic techniques, using the residue of the disaster to create his photographic portraits. Williams' and Camp's different approaches illustrate how artists understand and contextualize the world around them to communicate their ideas. Through this communication, we can understand the profound complexity, resonant effect, and sublime intricacy of the human experience.
